One-person show tells story of Simon Wiesenthal

Tom Dugan stars in his one-person play, “Wiesenthal,” about the famed Nazi hunter Oct. 20-21 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Tom Dugan stars in his one-person play, “Wiesenthal,” about the famed Nazi hunter Oct. 20-21 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. (Tom Dugan)

Myrna PetlickiPioneer Press

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, a hero emerged. A survivor named Simon Wiesenthal made it his mission to see that perpetrators were punished. Through his efforts, over 1,100 Nazi war criminals were made to pay for their crimes.

Actor and writer Tom Dugan shares the story of the man known as “The Nazi hunter” in his one-person show, “Wiesenthal,” performed at 8 p.m. Oct. 20 and 2 p.m. Oct. 21 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Dugan, who had written three one-person shows, was looking for his next subject when he saw the obituary for Simon Wiesenthal in the Los Angeles Times. “They talked about his rejection of collective guilt,” Dugan said. “A bell went off in my head. I remember, when I was a kid, my father telling me stories about his World War II experiences. He received the Bronze Battle Star and the Purple Heart. He liberated a camp called Langenstein, which was a subcamp of the Buchenwald system.”

Dugan would ask to feel the shrapnel in his father’s hip, and would tell him, “You must hate Germans.” His father’s reply was, “I don’t judge people by what group they belong to. I judge them by how they behave,” Dugan recalled. Reading that Wiesenthal also rejected collective guilt inspired the playwright and actor to explore the man’s history.

To begin his research, Dugan visited the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where he lives. There he studied several books that Wiesenthal had written. “From there I branched out,” Dugan related. “Everything that Simon would mention in a book, I would read three books about that. By the time I was done, I had read 30 or 40 books, I had seen dozens of documentaries and transcripts of Wiesenthal’s interviews, and I interviewed Holocaust survivors.”

The research process took a year, followed by a year to write the show.

“Wiesenthal” opened off-Broadway in 2014. Following that run, it toured extensively throughout the United States and Canada. The opening performance in Skokie will be the show’s 410th performance.

Every performance of “Wiesenthal” is followed by a talk. At the North Shore Center, Dugan will be joined by Alison Pure-Slovin, Midwest Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Chicago.

In creating the show, Dugan said, “I was worried that it would be too sad for people to want to see. But I learned that Wiesenthal was an amateur standup comedian before the war and had a terrific sense of humor, which he was able to utilize because he did many speaking engagements and he had many students come to his documentation center in Vienna to tell his story to.”

That became the basis of “Wiesenthal.” “The audience acts as the final group that comes to his documentation center in 2003, the day of his retirement,” Dugan said. “Wiesenthal used his sense of humor to keep his audience engaged. I was able to utilize Wiesenthal’s sense of humor in the play, which has been such a gift. The play has been so successful largely because it’s an uplifting show.” He noted that audiences spend a large portion of the 90-minute show laughing because of Wiesenthal’s sense of humor.

Dugan stressed that the most important thing about Wiesenthal’s work and the play he has created about the man is that “it is not a history lesson. History is used to illuminate what people are. When the audience leaves, they know a little bit more about themselves and what their potential for good and evil is. It’s a very sobering look into the mirror. The play is a warning to how this could easily happen again.”

Tom Dugan read over 30 books to create his one-person play, “Wiesenthal,” about the famed Nazi hunter, which he will perform Oct. 20-21 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie.

Tom Dugan read over 30 books to create his one-person play, “Wiesenthal,” about the famed Nazi hunter, which he will perform Oct. 20-21 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts in Skokie. (Tom Dugan)